FYROM: Wednesday marks the start of the final phase of constitutional amendments

The third and final phase of the implementation of the Prespes agreement is expected to start on Wednesday, 9 January with a parliamentary session where the voting of the constitutional amendments will take place.

In order for the amendments to be passed, two thirds of MPs should vote in favour of them.

PM Zoran Zaev is optimistic that he will be able to secure the necessary 80 votes in parliament. However, there are still many uncertainties surrounding this issue, because Albanian opposition parties, BESA and Alliance for Albanians have conditioned their vote with a number of measures that the government should take to improve the situation with t he Albanian community. These parties have proposed amendments that they want to incorporate in the Constitution.

The opposition led by VMRO-DPMNE has announced that it will not participate in the process of constitutional amendments. The vice chairman of this party, Aleksandar Nikolovski said that all of those MPs who will vote in favour of the constitutional amendments, will be expelled from the party.

Once the process for the constitutional amendments is wrapped up, the agreement should also be ratified by Greek MPs.

Last week, PM Zaev declared that he has faith on what his Greek counterpart told him that Greece will ratify the agreement without any problems. /ibna/